THIS SCOURGING, INTRACTABLE TERROR
Insecurity has ravished and humiliated Nigeria enough. Let’s arrest it frontally now, writes MONDAY PHILIPS EKPE
One of the most unfortunate fallouts of the reign of terror that has bedevilled Nigeria for close to two decades is its numbing effect on the populace. What used to scare us and elicit commensurate thoughts and actions to tackle it has somehow resulted in attitudes that range from denial to resignation, diffusion to helplessness and anxiety to phobia. And, at other times, to arguments over its proper categorisation and semantics. Just imagine why the sweat over the campaign by some individuals to remove the label of terrorism from bandits. As if we always need a situation in the magnitude of the 9/11 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, masterminded by Osama bin Laden in which thousands of people were massacred within minutes, to qualify for terrorism.
Introducing such trivialities can only complicate a matter that has literally brought the country to its knees. Call it terrorism, insurgency, kidnapping or banditry. The strain that binds them together is the impact on the people, particularly the unarmed. The practitioners of these evil trades are mostly wielders of arms and ammunitions, the types that even those authorised to monopolise the ownership of instruments of violence do not possess in good volume and quality. An average Nigerian wakes up in the morning and can no longer take his safety for granted.
